Samuel Doolin: God is hiding Jan. 6 fugitive Jonathan Pollock; and "manly" Jesus is coming for us
Doolin, cousin/brother to three J6 suspects, was arrested last week on weapons charges. One of his supporters said: "Let's fill that Courthouse with Patriots inside and out!!" Sound familiar?
Samuel Doolin is the 27-year-old older brother and/or cousin of three Lakeland-area Capitol Lynch Mob defendants, including fugitive Jonathan Pollock. He was arrested last week after a traffic stop led to the discovery of an illegal small arsenal of automatic weapons he reportedly said he needed to protect himself against law enforcement. He also reportedly declared himself a “sovereign” citizen, accountable only to the elected county sheriff.
That was the official account provided during Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd’s oddly sympathetic and low energy press conference announcing Doolin’s arrest last week. I wrote at great length about Grady’s sympathetic-to-the-Doolin/Pollock-family demeanor in the article below, which includes the video of the press conference itself.
Doolin’s rebuttal to Grady: “Dispelling False Accusations and Misunderstandings about My Arrest.”
On Wednesday, Doolin launched a counter press conference of a sort, denying Judd’s account of what happened via Facebook Live and denying that he did anything illegal. You can see it here. It’s worth a watch.
Doolin will get his day in court. If the stop was illegal; a judge will address it, I guess.
That’s why we have courts, although I have little faith in their their behavior in Florida. Our state has generally corrupted the justice system for the right kind of defendant.
Maybe Doolin is the right kind of defendant — and as bulletproof as Rick “T.I.T.S.” Nolte. Maybe not. Maybe he has a legitimate case. We’ll see.
Doolin did not take live questions; but I did ask him a question in comments after the fact. I was the only reporter, as far as I know, to engage him. And we had two brief, but newsworthy exchanges.
Doolin: God is hiding Pollock
I suspect I am the first person, law enforcement or otherwise, to ever ask Doolin the whereabouts of his fugitive cousin and ideological comrade Pollock.
Here is the wanted brochure about Pollock, who is accused of assaulting police officers as part of the Capitol Lynch Mob. Here’s a key excerpt from the brochure below. Note the part in bold:
Pollock is believed to have friends and family throughout central and north Florida, as well as in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. He is a welder and ironworker, by trade, and may be working in this, or similar construction jobs.
With that in mind, I asked Doolin:
“Bro, where’s your cousin, Jonathan?”
Doolin answered as follows, suggesting pretty clearly that friends and family aren’t hiding Pollock from justice; God is:
“When a man is in Christ and God hides a man, no harm can come to him. have a blessed day, sir.”
A woman calling herself Betty Gillespie then asked why Pollock is a fugitive. I provided her the wanted brochure, to which she responded:
“just more lies just like all the other political prisoners that are locked up ! Sorry not buying anything the FBI does these days. Have a good evening.”
“keeping an oath to God for riotousness” — attention courthouse security
Facebook claims there were more than 940 views of Doolin’s video; but Facebook is notorious for overstating video engagement. There was not a ton of interaction on his page from comments or supporters, thankfully.
Still, one of Doolin’s supporters, calling himself “Ross Justice,” declared:
“Let's fill that Courthouse with Patriots inside and out!!”
I pointed out the obvious in response and asked another question:
“Ya'll don't have a great record of filling official buildings "with Patriots inside and out." Are you calling for another public lynch mob?”
To which Samuel Doolin replied — a bit sinisterly to my reading:
“sir and unjust man answers a matter when he hears one side, you used the word again, there was never a before. lynch mob? unless you believe all you read on the internet. dont confuse hippie Jesus for Biblical, or manly firmness and keeping an oath to God for riotousness”
That’s pretty jumbled.
But “keeping an oath to God for riotousness” doesn’t sound good when it’s an answer to: “Are you calling for another public lynch mob?”
Pay attention Grady Judd and State Attorney Brian Haas, if you care.
We must fill the social vacuum when leaders fail to
There are many people out there who think ignoring these people and hoping they just go away and don’t attack us, personally, is the best way to address them. Don’t poke the bear, etc.
I disagree.
We saved our Polk County school district from the total chaos that Brevard, Collier, and Sarasota County are experiencing now because we did not try to quietly wish away the grossness and criminality of the CCDF/GOP “movement.” We engaged it, elevated it, confronted it morally and politically— head on. We poked the hell out of that bear. And it rolled over, tamed.
Whether the cheater Rick “T.I.T.S.” Nolte stays or leaves the School Board is almost irrelevant. We’ve already weaponized him and the CCDF against every gross thing they all stand for. Nolte will have no other function but “helpful-thing-for Billy-to-strategically-mock” as long as he stays on the board.
The Pollock/Doolin family cell is an extension of the CCDF/Nolte dynamic. And yes, it has demonstrated its capacity for violent anti-social, anti-police behavior — as part of a mob that hates America, both physically and ideologically.
Some people I like very much think such demonstrated capacity for violence and threat means we should give them a wider berth. One friend expressed it like this in a text to another friend, in response to my article about Judd’s press conference:
Tell [Billy] to settle down! He’s tryin’a pick a fight with Grady AND mobsters. This is how books get written. Jesus.
I disagree, again.
Mobs form in the vacuums of society, where public spaces are unhealthy or untended, physically and metaphorically. I’m not trying to pick a fight with anybody. I am trying to tend our shared public space, to fill the vacuum and deny momentum and power to the gross and the anti-social. The leaders most responsible for tending Polk’s public space, Grady Judd and Brian Haas, have certainly shown themselves unwilling to do it. So I don’t have much choice.
I think by filling the social vacuum publicly, confrontationally, I’m helping deny the “mobsters” the space and momentum they’ve shown they need to do their worst damage. I actually think that’s a much safer personal approach than snarking around the edges at them as they gather steam.
I hope I’m providing a disincentive for anti-social behavior. If the Doolin/Pollock clan responds to that disincentive by accounting for its individual behaviors, obeying the law, and leaving us all alone, they won’t have to worry about me getting in their business.
If that’s too much to ask, and they feel the need to bring their “manly” Jesus to bear against me personally, I suspect that will help trigger deep wells of latent power in our society to confront them even more powerfully.
I “win” either way.
I don’t prefer winning in the last way; but true citizenship demands acceptance of whatever risk — small or large — it entails.
Thank you Mr.Townsend. Hate, greed, and ignorance are scary things and, although I feel you may be tilting at windmills trying to find some nugget truth and/or reason with these individuals, I applaud your courage and persistence.
Thanks for your willingness to fill that social vacuum for us all.